ado file question

[Nathanael Lucas]

Dear All,

quick question I'm wanting to make an ado file with multiple categorical variables able to be entered, it may be 3 it may be 4 etc etc

I can get the code to work when I type it in individually into my long code e.g

local vars blue black green yellow

but when I do the ado final it fails

program define code
args r(varlist) y z
tempfile statistics
postfile ests str1 sex N Median p25 p75
local vars "`r(varlist)'"

....
then attempt

code r(blue black green yellow) sex continuous

what should I be using instead of r(varlist)? so that I can enter blue black green yellow

Thanks

[Nick Cox]

I don't get a sense that you need a program here. You evidently want to wire in specific variable names. Use a do-file for that purpose.

Even if you have some variable names left over from something else, syntax accommodating it would be different. A program can start

program code 
        syntax varlist 

and you might call it with

code `r(varlist)'

but Stata won't evaluate bare mentions to r(varlist) as you need ` ' to do that.